"Cake au Chocolat" - Chocolate Cake, Gluten and Dairy Free

Cake Au Chocolat (Chocolate Cake)

Gluten and Dairy Free

Adapted by My Little Blue Heron from “Les cakes de Laurent sans gluten & sans lait” de Laurent Dran

My apartment smells like chocolate heaven. Merci bien, M. Dran! My dear readers, you will adore this chocolate cake sans gluten, sans dairy. No one will “uh-uh” it.

Chocolate is ______________.

Dran suggests glamming it up with chocolate chips on top. Mine sank to the bottom. It wasn't a deal breaker for me, but releasing the cakes from the pans was a little bit arduous. If you choose to add chocolate chips (please use excellent quality chips, like dark Guittard), I suggest you add them after the cake has spent about 10-15 minutes in the oven (work quickly to sprinkle them over the top).

Use excellent quality cocoa (always). I use Valrhona cocoa from France. If you use a different cocoa, that's fine. Just be sure it’s dark (and unsweetened).

It’s important to sift ingredients well. 

sifted dry ingredients

The texture of your loaf depends on this important step.  

ooh la la!

Always use refined coconut oil. When you use refined coconut oil, your loaf will taste like chocolate rather than coconut. The oil must be at a liquid state, but it shouldn’t be hot. If you have one, use a microwave on half or lower power. If you don’t, melt the oil slowly and cool it before adding to the batter. (You don't want to scramble your eggs).  

I’ve adapted some of Dran’s kitchen Frenchibility to the American kitchen. Beginning with: you’ll need a large loaf pan (dark pans bake best for GF), or a couple of smaller ones or a melange of small baking tins/cupcake or muffin tins etc.

You’ll need a kitchen scale, and if you don't own one yet, you’ll be happy when you do. Your results will be fine and always consistent. Here’s a link to a recipe for honey spice cake (Pain d'épices), also adapted from Dran’s book that has a link to an inexpensive and good scale to buy on Amazon.

This will look lovely if you dust the top with some powdered sugar just before serving.

Plain, with berries and diary-free whipped cream or with sorbet or dairy-free ice cream, I hope you’ll adore this chocolate cake. (If it survives more than a couple of days, toast it, and spread a little raspberry jam on it for breakfast!)

I doubled (supersized) Dran's recipe. For the American baker, quantities are for a fairly conventional sized loaf, enough to feed 10-12 with some exceptions for those who may be stressed about the new tax legislation in the U.S., or that our beloved NPR hosts can’t keep their pants zipped and have joined the ranks of the mounted (or mounting) police state of misogyny. Given this state of affairs (sorry), this recipe may feed just 1 or 2.

Wishing you happiness, health, love and ease - in and out of the kitchen,

xojane

Gluten and Dairy Free Chocolate Cake

Preparation: Oil a large loaf pan with flavorless oil or spray release. After mis-en-place, preheat oven to 350º F., rack in center of oven.

Ingredients:

100 g. superfine brown rice flour

50 g. potato starch

40 g. blanched almond flour (finely ground)

60 g. dark bittersweet cocoa

9 g. aluminum free baking powder

4 g. Guar gum

¼ tsp. (or more, to taste) Kosher salt

6 eggs, size large, room temperature

320 g. confectioner’s sugar (10X)

120 g. Refined coconut oil, liquid state

Procedure:

     Preheat the oven (see above).

Weigh all dry ingredients and whisk together.

Sift dry ingredients through a mesh sieve and set aside.

Bring coconut oil to a liquid state and set aside.

Measure 10X sugar and set aside.

Put eggs into bowl of an electric mixer or a large bowl and using

whisk attachment mix until yolks are broken.

Add 10X sugar and whisk, scraping down until all ingredients 

are combined. Once combined, whisk on ‘high’ for a minute.

Dump in the sifted dry ingredients, and whisk until well incorporated.

Add coconut oil and mix until combined.

                 

Fill prepared loaf pan (or pans) and bake in middle of oven 

for approximately 20-40 minutes, depending on the size of your       

loaf or loaves. If adding chocolate chips, add them about 10-15         

minutes into the bake. 

Loaves are done when toothpick comes out clean. 

Don’t overbake.

Cool on rack for 10-15 minutes before releasing to cool completely 

before serving or wrapping.

As with all GF cakes, this is best eaten on baking day, but 

may be wrapped and kept at room temperature for a day or two 

at most. More than that amount of time? Wrap well, freeze and 

defrost before serving.   

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Sbrisolona

Sbrisolona

The Ultimate (Gluten-Free) Crumb

Adapted and modified from David Lebovitz by My Little Blue Heron

Crumb is why we bother to eat crumb cake, any crumb pie, crumble, and why Entenmann’s “Fine Baked Goods” one-upped their crumb coffee cake to  “Ultimate Crumb Coffee Cake".  

Sbrisolona is from Mantua, Italy, and it dates back to about the year 600. In its local dialect, brisa means (give up?) "crumb." In 600, basic ingredients were used: corn flour, lard and hazelnuts. (Almonds were a luxury item.) 

My preference is to add anise seed. Gluten-free baking tastes better, even shines, when strutting strong flavors. Grind the seed (coarsely) in your spice grinder (If you don't own one, get a coffee grinder .. the blade kind, and label it, “for spices only”), with a mortar and pestle (did you know that you pronounce it : pɛsəl?), or with a Japanese suribachi. This Japanese mortar and pestle is my favorite grinder. Its greatness lies within its ridges. Because of its design, you can effortlessly grind spices, seed, other dried or semi-dried foods, and sesame seeds into a paste. Here's a link for one in the U.S. on Amazon. 

If you make your own GF blend, I recommend using superfine brown rice and superfine white rice flours. 

Still in its youth, gluten-free baking and flours have begun to grow up. Superfine flours have eliminated that mouthful of sand quality to baked goods. Balancing rice dominance with softer flours and varied starches are producing flour blends that are finally merging taste with texture.

You can substitute wheat flour for gluten-free flour (that felt great!) 

The only dairy I include in my diet is butter, and this recipe screams butter. If you don’t use butter, use the finest butter substitute you can find. I haven’t made this dairy-free, but there are excellent quality non-dairy butters available. If yours has sodium (I haven't seen any "sweet" or "salt-free" non-dairy butters, have you?), omit the salt in the recipe.

If you don't like touching things, you'll need a helper. If you loved Play-Doh, this is like getting the blue. You can use a pastry blender, but there’s no way out of using your hands for the final step of putting this wonderful dough together.

To achieve excellent crumb, be vigilant and patient; and make sure you bake it until it’s golden-brown.

from my little blue heron’s kitchen to yours,

with peace and love,

jane

R. Crumb

Sbrisolona

Ingredients:

1 ½ c./170 g. almonds, toasted for about 6-8 minutes in a preheated 350º oven, until lightly toasted, then cooled

1 ¼ c./175 g. gluten-free flour mix of choice (xanthan gum added)

If no xanthan gum has been added, add ¾ tsp. xanthan gum

¾ c./110g. stone ground cornmeal

½ c./100 g. granulated white sugar

¼ c./45 g. packed, light brown sugar

¾ tsp. Kosher salt

8 oz.(2 sticks)/225 g. unsalted butter, CHILLED and cubed

2 large egg yolks (you can freeze the whites for later use)

½ tsp. each: vanilla extract I highly recommend Baldwin's of West Stockbridge, Mass., almond extract, Fiori Di Sicilia (click here for link to this fantastic flavoring, a distinctively Italian combination of vanilla, orange and citrus.)

zest of one unsprayed or organic orange (JUST the zest .. no white pith)

1 tsp anise seed, coarsely ground optional (but highly recommended)

L-R, Back to Front: whole anise seed, Baldwin's Vanilla Extract, King Arthur Flour "Fiori Di Sicilia"
Japanese suribachi (grinding bowl)

Procedure:

Getting ready: Preheat oven to 350º F. (180º C.) Butter a quarter sheet pan, or a 9-10” square or a round cake pan. Cut butter into small cubes and refrigerate. The butter must be very cold.

Remove 1 c./110 grams of the almonds and ¼ cup/35 g. of the GF flour blend and put in the bowl of your food processor. Pulse until almonds are in small pieces, but are still recognizable as almonds. Don't go all perfectionist about getting them all the same size. Transfer to a large mixing bowl. MLBH Truc: When you pull out a mixing bowl, return it and pull out a bigger one. Always.

Place the remainder of the almonds in the bowl of the food processor and pulse several times until they are in large(r) pieces. For now, leave them in the bowl.

Add the remainder of the dry ingredients to the large bowl that has the first batch of chopped almonds that you pulsed with the flour, mixing well (with a whisk or with your hands.)

In a small bowl, whisk together the orange zest, egg yolks and extracts. Set aside. (If you do this in advance (mise en place), cover with plastic wrap to keep this mixture nice and moist.

Add the cold, cubed butter, and with your hands (or with a pastry blender), cut in the butter or rub with your hands into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles small peas. Again, irregular pieces are fine. What is important is that the butter doesn’t soften too much from the warmth of your hands (work quickly and with your fingers and not the ‘warm’ part of your hand.)

Now, dump in the larger almond pieces and the orange zest/egg yolk/extract mixture. Use a spatula to get every last drop of the wet ingredients into the dry/butter mixture.

With your hands, mix together, squeezing gently, until dough comes together in clumps.

Transfer into your prepared pan. DO NOT pat down the mixture. Leave is in clumps. It’s okay if there’s space between the clumps .. like a crumb topping. It’s critical that you don’t press down or compact the mixture. 

N.B.(If you like raw dough, this recipe is fantastic because it isn't highly sugared. Next time, double the recipe and mix this into vanilla ice cream or some chocolate sorbetto. Three cheers for your next binge/pity party decadent/comfort-food blue ribbon Americanized dessert!)

Bake in preheated oven until golden-brown, approximately 30-40 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool completely before breaking up into uneven pieces. 

Store in an air-tight tin/container for about 5-7 days at a cool room temperature. Freeze Sriboslona for up to two months.